Sarah McKenzie is a visual artist based in Colorado. Her paintings document our built landscape -- exploring changes in our architecture (what we build) for evidence of societal, economic, and cultural shifts (why we build). Her work is currently represented in Denver by David B. Smith Gallery. McKenzie is a recipient of the Marion International Fellowship for the Visual and Performing Arts (2021) and a Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant (2012).
McKenzie has exhibited her paintings nationally, including shows with the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, the Yale School of Architecture, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver.
Since 2020, she has been working on an extended project exploring the architecture of U.S. prisons. In 2021, she began teaching art in correctional facilities through the University of Denver Prison Arts Initiative (DUPAI). She exhibited her paintings of prison interiors alongside work by eighteen DUPAI artists at the Marion Art Gallery at SUNY Fredonia in 2022.
At MacDowell, McKenzie created new paintings for this project in preparation for a 2024 exhibition at the Museum of Art Fort Collins, To See Inside. These new works were shown alongside drawings and paintings by incarcerated artists whom McKenzie has met through teaching visual art in the Colorado Department of Corrections.
